13 ms·

Double Commander

154 points by smartmic 4y ago

pragmatick 4y ago
Would be interesting to know what these "new ideas in file management" are that TC does not have.
qwerty456127 4y ago
In my opinion Total Commander is the #1 best app ever and Double Commander is an excellent free clone. It used to be incomplete and buggy but improved substantially during the recent years.
janandonly 4y ago
I'm no longer on Windows, but I always loved [Total Commander](https://www.ghisler.com/ https://www.ghisler.com/). As others have noted before: there is a decline in the need for this kind of tools because files are hidden from view nowadays. We finally have systems where most of the time, a photo is "a photo" and not "a file that you open with [Irfanview](https://www.irfanview.com/)(or https://www.irfanview.com/)(or whatever)".
mdrzn 4y ago
Literally one of the first software I've ever used since the first 2000s. Still used to date. Love me some Total Commander!
underlines 4y ago
For data hoarding a good file manager is still key. When you're managing your own data without todays abstraction layers provided by all those walled gardens (Google Photos, Spotify, Netflix), you will copy, rename and structure a lot of that data: Downloaded content often times packed away in countless partial rar files, sometimes wrongly named or structured. Long story short, I still depend on: - Advanced regex bulk renaming of totalcommander (but less so since Windows 11 + PowerToy's Renaming) - Fast two panel navigation, for all that pirated content (Audio/Software piracy is legal under certain circumstances in Switzerland, for example for sharing within the family) - Fast two panel folder diffing for my Photography/Videography backup into Google Drive using Google Filestream as a virtual drive (but less so, since using WinDiff for folder and file merging)
ggambetta 4y ago
I use emelfm2 on Linux. But really this all made me nostalgic for XTree [0]. What made it so damn good? Why don't we have a modern equivalent these days? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XTree https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XTree
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- nope96 4y ago
  There is a fantastic windows clone of XTree that has been around forever... still updated https://www.ztree.com/html/ztreewin.htm https://www.ztree.com/html/ztreewin.htm
  - mrsaint 4y ago
    How I wish there was a native version of ZTree for Linux.
liotier 4y ago
Someone liked it https://developer.run/31 https://developer.run/31 - and expresses preference over Dolphin, which I don't understand because I find that Dolphin does all that but with the benefits of KDE integration.
TonyTrapp 4y ago
Started using it a couple of years ago when I was mostly using a single operating system, now it saves my sanity by providing the same good file browsing experience across all systems.
darthcloud 4y ago
I used to be a big user of Total Commander back in the Win9x days (then Windows Commander) I was actually too much used to it and I had a hard time using my friends computer at all using the default Windows explorer. I probably updated to WinXP at some point and didn't reinstall it. Never felt the need to to install a double windows file manager since then. Even if it's clearly better than the default option.
- mrweasel 4y ago
  Just two years ago I had a developer I worked with on a regular basis, he is a Total Commander power user. He never opens Explorer or navigates the file system outside Total Commander. There is still a ton of weird Windows utilities being developed and maintained. While I personally don't like the platforms, there is a lot of safety in knowing that you can learn a tool and then almost 30 years later, it's still available. I'm still confident that if you want to future-proof your application, C++ and Windows is the platform to go for. Even if I don't like it.
  - hulitu 4y ago
    Windows explorer is almost unusable. Microsoft poluting it with Downloads, Images, Videos and My Documents virtual folders (just to name a few) didn't help either.
    - ziddoap 4y ago
      What specific aspects do you find to be almost unusable? There's room for improvement (new features are always nice), sure, but 'almost unusable' is quite the exaggeration when you consider that there is ~1B Windows installs and yet outside of small tech circles I've never once heard someone complain about Explorer or its usability. It Just Works, pretty much all the time, and is easy enough and intuitive enough that I haven't even had to explain it to the tech-illiterates in my circle. Does the Downloads folder really make you say 'this is unusable'?
rob74 4y ago
I'm a big fan of two-panel file managers, starting with the ancestor of them all, Norton Commander under DOS. Under Windows, I used Total Commander. I even started developing an NC clone myself with Delphi, but only got as far as an "alpha version". After switching to Linux, I used Krusader for a few years, but then discovered and switched to Double Commander. Since it is developed with Lazarus/FreePascal, maybe I will be able to apply some of the ideas I had for my Delphi NC clone to it (if I can find the time and sympathy from the maintainers)?
- BeetleB 4y ago
  > Under Windows, I used Total Commander. I would recommend Far for Windows users. Much more like the original Norton Commander. https://www.farmanager.com/ https://www.farmanager.com/
  - realharo 4y ago
    Yeah, Far actually has pretty good integration with the command line, which is a must for a good file manager - and a file manager is a very natural fit for many CLI workflows.
  - TheRealPomax 4y ago
    This is really "in addition to total commander" as far as I'm concerned. Far is great on the CLI, but when you're not working with terminals you generally want a normal looking application. Both Far and TC are basically "two sides of the same coin", you can use either one, but using both in their respective environments makes life even better.
    - BeetleB 4y ago
      > Far is great on the CLI, but when you're _not_ working in the CLI you want a normal looking application. I have Far as an icon on my desktop/shortcuts bar. I just click it and it runs. When I quit it (F10), the window goes away. Most people will not even realize it's a CLI program. What exactly would be the problem using it this way?
res0nat0r 4y ago
I've really liked Altap Salamnder for Windows. Lots of features, and freeware too. https://www.altap.cz/ https://www.altap.cz/
- ihateolives 4y ago
  I used it for quite some time, even bought a license but then dropped it when when they dragged their feet for years with utf8 filename support. I think they never fixed it.
- mobilio 4y ago
  I've using it since version 1.52 AFAIK and this is FIRST app i install on fresh Windows.
  - res0nat0r 4y ago
    I also recommend Everything. It's the best file searching app I've found for Windows that fits my searching style, just type a regex and give me what I want. https://www.voidtools.com/ https://www.voidtools.com/
cestith 4y ago
It seems a bit odd to me to credit Total Commander but not a single one of Midnight Commander, Windows Commander, EF Commander, WinNC, PC Commander, SpeedCommander, XCommander, XTree, YTree, ZTree, or the venerable Norton Commander. It even still uses the same hotkeys as Norton Commander. Still, it supports Total Commander's plugins in case someone is using those, it's LGPL, it looks like a decent example of a useable Free Pascal application to dive into contributing against, it's cross-platform (Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, macOS), and it builds against gtk2, qt4, or qt5. Overall it looks like a nice project. It could probably use a commit in the About page for a first contribution to the project noting a little more history of its lineage.
- npteljes 4y ago
  It's not odd, they are literally creating an upgraded Total Commander clone.
- nathell 4y ago
  Windows Commander was the former name of Total Commander. It changed the name in 2002 after Christian Ghisler received a cease-and-desist letter about trademark usage from Microsoft.
  - cestith 4y ago
    Microsoft has been known to be perhaps overzealous in their trademark protection at times, but I think that's a valid complaint. It fills the same niche as Windows Explorer so confusion was quite possible. I always had Total Commander on my BartPE images back in the day.
- notyourday 4y ago
  This is missing vc - Volkov Commander - written in assembly. It was tiny, had amazingly complete functionality and was blazingly fast.
  - cestith 4y ago
    Yes, sorry. I meant it to be illustrative of many of them being out there and influencing one another. I'm not sure I could put together a definitive list in the scope of an HN comment. vc was definitely worth mentioning, so thanks for bringing it up.
desindol 4y ago
Just let me replace win+e without ahk or registry editing.
- tveyben 4y ago
  Total commander is linkes to Win+1 for me, no need for Win+E! Win+2 is for Notepad++ Those two are my most used shortcuts on Windows. Must give double commander a test run on Linux (and see if that’s better than TotalCommander in Wine). TCM shortcuts are so second nature that I can’t imagine anything else (never found a good solution did OSX) I am too old to call it by it’s new name MacOS, I also call the command key for the Apple key ;-)
- yardshop 4y ago
  To expand on what tveyben mentioned, the first 10 items in your Windows task bar can be opened by pressing Win+1 through Win+0. If you pin items there, they will always have that keyboard shortcut. Even so, as much as I prefer using alternate file managers, I still like having Win+E for regular old Explorer.
Aspos 4y ago
FAR works on Linux and MacOS as well https://github.com/elfmz/far2l https://github.com/elfmz/far2l
eterps 4y ago
DirOpus for Amiga was my first two-panel filemanager. Screenshot for nostalgia :) -> http://www.abime.net/img/files/applications/DOpus/DOpus4_2.png http://www.abime.net/img/files/applications/DOpus/DOpus4_2.p...
- blackhaz 4y ago
  Alas, error 403.
  - TonyTrapp 4y ago
    Hotlink protection. Hit Return on the URL bar to reload it with a clean referrer, and it will display.
- mhd 4y ago
  I really found it surprising that so few of the PC based orthodox filemanagers adopted the DOpus style of user-defined buttons and multiple rows thereof at the bottom, instead keeping with the few function key-based operations inherited from a time when there was simple no other option. (I'm aware of Gentoo and Worker doing that on Linux)
- dazzawazza 4y ago
  While it is nostalgia, I use Directory Opus 12 every day on my windows PC. Really speeds up my everyday work in game development.
  - UberFly 4y ago
    Directory Opus addict here too. It is my MVP in pretty much everything I do on my PC.
blackhaz 4y ago
Commanders! The first thing I install on literally any computer I touch. It's like climbing on the top of the hill (or mountain!) and overlooking the dense foliage. I really don't establish a mental connection with the machine until I have a commander running. Doing any disk operations in the Explorer, whatever else drag-and-drop there is, or just plain shell, is just pathetically painful and slow. Also, shout out to DOS Navigator! I used Norton Commander until 386DX-40, but then switched to the Navigator. Still remember I saw it first time in a shop where I was buying pirated games. The dude in the shop with the long hair was copying files and it looked uber-cool for some reason. I had to ask what was the name of this wonderful utility. He silently showed me the About dialog without turning back. There was no way back to NC from that point on my high-tower Pentium-133.
- agentwiggles 4y ago
  I guess stuff like Commander never quite got a hold on me because it feels easy to do everything at the shell. What kinds of benefits am I missing out on?
  - orzig 4y ago
    Seconded. I am feeling the enthusiasm of people on this thread and I am really curious - if this could really make me as happy as it makes them I’m totally game, but I just don’t see where it would fit into my workflow. Can some people give more concrete examples of what they use it for?
    - saiya-jin 4y ago
      2 panes (both heavily tabbed so more like 10-15 of them representing various projects/activitives, tabbing for some reason works better mentally than bunch of explorer windows) is great concept, you always move from A to B if organizing/copying/moving. When I see people trying to achieve something in explorer, its literally 10x slower, and I speak of people doing it for living in bank, like desktop support guys. Alt+F7 -> fulltext search, only in given file types, in archives (recursively), limiting for size, date, regexp etc. - way more powerful than any other tool I've ever used. Viewing and editing files directly in archives (or in archives in archives in archives) without manually unpacking - as mainly java dev I do this very often. Again the speed and convenience is unmatched. Very good built-in multi-rename tool, with preview of changes, GUI for this is so much better than any command line tool. Very good file comparison tool - cleaner than anything other products (or dedicated ones) bring. I don't want to end up listing all features of Total commander, but suffice to say its too my first tool to install (after firefox with ublock origin). Its not as much about how content I am using it, but whenever I see colleagues doing similar actions, they are maddeningly slow, ineffective and sometimes even give up for task that takes me few seconds. But that's full time usage of 2-pane mode since 1993, never saw any appeal in those simple explorer-like windows when I can be super quick with few shortcuts.
pkrumins 4y ago
Total Commander is the best commander.
- RachelF 4y ago
  There's a great 3rd party upgrade to it. Best for power users: https://www.tcup.pl/index.php/en/ https://www.tcup.pl/index.php/en/ To continue with the 1990's vibe, Mr T would "pity the fool who don't use TCUP"
jrm4 4y ago
Somewhat unrelated, but I'm still wondering why there still appears to be not much of a push for strong GUI filemanager + terminal integration. I know Dolphin has it, but it feels not quite there.
mhd 4y ago
It's interesting to see the "decline" of secondary file managers on Windows and probably Linux systems, too. Back in the days, pretty much any "power user" had their own favorite replacement for the built-in stop gap solution. Quite often one of the commanders, but I've seen other preferences. There was a pretty huge market of shareware (or open source on linux) for this. Next to image viewers probably one of the most common third party tools. I rarely see that these days, both from regular users and my fellow software developers. Is it because file usage in general has declined? Generally mabye, but not in that target demographic. Is it because the system apps have gotten better? Maaaybe. I personally wouldn't consider the Win 11 explorer to be that more usable than winfile.exe, but people have different thresholds. Personally, I'd even make the argument that they've become worse at times and that they're not even in the same niche, i.e. a "file system interface", probably spatial and a more abstracted powerful file manager could and should co-exist. Hopefully the file selection dialogue then isn't totally unrelated from a UI point of view.
- qwerty456127 4y ago
  > It's interesting to see the "decline" of secondary file managers on Windows and probably Linux systems, too. Back in the days, pretty much any "power user" had their own favorite replacement for the built-in stop gap solution. That's because typical everyday workflows became more on-line and less filesystem-centric this way. The proportion of "power user" is also much smaller today, most of the computer users are ordinary people and don't even have a solid understanding of what a file is.
- SergeAx 4y ago
  I started with Norton Commander under MS DOS in 1990-s. I am still using a Far Manager on Windows. It is completely keyboard-based, and I see from the experience that my file operations are 2-3 times more effective then of my peers using system file managers with mouse (or, even worse, touchpad). I have a years old system of file storage in my home directory, mostly for code: Github, Gitlab, work projects, pet projects etc. Also Downloads folder is there by default. It is much like using a console, but with greater visibility and pre-defined shortcuts for frequent operations.
- 4y ago
yardshop 4y ago
Neat to see this here, I just started using this app a couple months ago and I like it. I've been a big fan of alternative file managers for years. I loved LIST back in the DOS days as an alternative to DIR =) where you could easily browse folders, and view files in regular or hex view with a keypress. After moving to Windows, I wanted something similar and found The V File Viewer (used to be called V, The File Viewer) by Charles Prineas (https://www.fileviewer.com https://www.fileviewer.com). This has hex view, CSV view, and many other useful features. It can be set up in a dual-paned fashion similar to the *-Commander line of apps, but with its own approach. I used Total Commander for a while too and registered it, but didn't stick with it. Recently I wanted something similar that I could put on computers at work and share with staff, and found Double Commander and like it a lot. It has its own approach and quirks as well, but I'm getting used to it. I also like that fact that it's written in Free Pascal and Lazarus. I used to do a lot with Delphi and this has gotten me back into that language with the thought that I might be able to contribute some changes at some point. Also along those lines, just the other day I learned about CudaText which is a very nice open source programmer's editor similar to SublimeText. It's also written in Free Pascal and Lazarus. I'm happier using this and sharing with staff than I am with Visual Studio Code which comes with too much overbearing MS-ness for my preferences.
hota_mazi 4y ago
I've been a big fan of xPlorer 2 [1] for many years now. [1] https://www.zabkat.com/ https://www.zabkat.com/
pipeline_peak 4y ago
These old school Commander type file managers don’t integrate too well. Windows 11 side by side pane is fantastic anyway. I guess it’s ideal if you really have to sit down and do busy work, but I don’t see anything wrong with File Explorer……..except that obnoxiously excessive side panel that forever thinks I want to use OneAnything or weird quick access virtual folders that points to something called Documents completely separate from my local Documents sigh. They could make file explorer a lot simpler.
TheRealPomax 4y ago
Having a hard time finding anything on the site that explains how it's different from Total Commander though, other than price. If it's just "Total Commander, but free", including TC plugin support, I'd be rather surprised if that's even legal? Because if it looks and acts effectively the same as a paid application, except yours is free, then there is very concrete and intentional monetary damage being done.
- npteljes 4y ago
  It runs on Linux natively, for one. And also the settings are reorganized.
- arpa 4y ago
  You must really love software patents!
  - ccbccccbbcccbb 4y ago
    No it's not about patents and legalese. It's about human(e) attitude. Christian Ghisler has been developing Total Commander for 27 years, since 1995. While he didn't invent the idea of two-pane file manager and more or less reimplemented Norton Commander in proper graphics-mode GUI, he added so much more to it over those three decades that it wouldn't be right to call it a copy of NC; moreover, he didn't ship it for free, he priced it at the same $49. What the author of Copy, sorry, Double Commander does is pure and simple dumping. It's like standing next to a bakery and giving away same cakes for free. Does that feel right? I wonder how the development of Double Commander is backed financially.
    - unixhero 4y ago
      It is open source, free as in libre, EDIT and as in beer.
      - ccbccccbbcccbb 4y ago
        From https://doublecmd.github.io https://doublecmd.github.io >Double Commander is absolutely free <,comma> open source software. Implies free as in beer as well, unless someone rubs my nose into the price stated somewhere on the website.
gigel82 4y ago
Love it. It's the first thing I install on macOS and Linux; for Windows I already own several Total Commander licenses.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
  What do you use on macOS?
  - gigel82 4y ago
    I'm still using it from when I last installed it on my macOS, didn't realize he deprecated mac support :( . FWIW, the installer is called "doublecmd-0.9.10-9640.qt.x86_64.dmg" if you want to look it up online somewhere. I'll guess I have to look for an alternative now... sigh
    - out_of_protocol 4y ago
      https://doublecmd.sourceforge.io/site/eng/snapshots.php https://doublecmd.sourceforge.io/site/eng/snapshots.php snapshots for mac available, latest is 1.1.0
      - gigel82 4y ago
        Thanks, worked for me!
dark-star 4y ago
As a regular Total Commander user since version 3-point-something (and Norton Commander before that), I cannot imagine ever going back to Windows Explorer for file management. I'm infinitely faster than coworkers who work with Explorer, and it's awesome. Seeing an almost-perfect clone as fully open-source software makes me happy. However, building a fully-featured open-source clone is probably years in the future, even for the features I use most. One just has to read the release notes for Total Commander to see what kind of corner-cases and special cases Christian (Total Commander author) has had to take care of. Just being able to put copy jobs into the background, work some more, and then bring them back into foreground again I cannot even imagine on how tricky this was to code so that it works correctly (and all using Pascal, no less) I will definitely keep an eye out on this one, but I don't think I'll make the switch in the near future.
- ttpphd 4y ago
  Thank you. As a total commander user, I was hoping someone would do this comparison and share it. Appreciated!
- majkinetor 4y ago
  DC is very complite replacement of TC, I was using TC (in advanced way, I know most of its numerious features) for decades and switched to DC without missing anything.
aidenn0 4y ago
If I don't have TC shortcuts in my muscle memory, am I losing out on using Krusader on linux rather than Double Commander?
- unixhero 4y ago
  Double Commander and Total Commander are amazing tools of the mind.
- Isognoviastoma 4y ago
  Nope, depending on your workflow, you can miss features of Krusader like archive integration, browsing over ssh, lock-step navigation in panels, selection modes, builtin editor/viewer formats coverage and other tiny yet comfortable goodies. Double Commander is an acceptable substitute of Krusader on non-Unices.
alexalx666 4y ago
MC meets MS Word, no thanks, MC already has everything + fluffy feeling you are on 80386. Sometimes I just go there to relax
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
GekkePrutser 4y ago
Too bad it's not TUI, I was hoping to see an improved version of midnight commander :)
clint 4y ago
All of these commanders are a rip of the original Norton Commander by John Socha in 1986. John also created the first screen saver and coined the term. His company also created the Microsoft Plus! addon for Windows 95 and screensavers for Win98. Pretty cool dude!
- rasz 4y ago
  Dont you mean "Norton Commander Copyright (C) 1986 by Peter Norton"? :-) Reminds me of https://wetmachine.com/my-thoughts-exactly/ghost-writer/ https://wetmachine.com/my-thoughts-exactly/ghost-writer/ >I was ego surfing today when I came upon this link to a book “Inside the Sun386i and Sun486i” by Peter Norton and, to my great astonishment, me. >And it turned out that I was going to have to write a 400 or so page book. For which I was going to be given, I think, a $3,000 advance against royalties. The book was going to say “By PETER NORTON” and there would be a tiny “with John Sundman” at the bottom. Norton was not required to do any writing or editing;
  - hjkl0 4y ago
    I guess you were joking, but FWIW, John Socha is the creator of Norton Commander: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Socha https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Socha > John Socha-Leialoha (born 1958) is a software developer best known for creating Norton Commander, the first orthodox file manager
mmsimanga 4y ago
I often "favorite" such threads because of the alternatives listed in the comments. I use Multi Commander[0]. I have tried a few of the others over the years but for the last five years or more I haven't moved from Multi Commander. [0] http://multicommander.com/ http://multicommander.com/
unixhero 4y ago
Double Commander is amazing! Is is a drop in replacement for Total Commander. It even supports Total Commander expansion modules, of which there are hundreds.
georgia_peach 4y ago
I've been playing with this on Linux. Lots of features. Built-in everything: editor, viewer, searcher, batch-renamer, grepper, etc. It all seems to work. No crashes. FreePascal is fantastic for writing things like this. If I were stuck on Windows without Cygwin (coreutils), this would do.
- witrak 4y ago
  >I've been playing with this on Linux. Short question: does it grab Tab keystroke or allow to use it in shell normally? Lack of shell Tab expansion was the second reason I never accepted MC in Linux even though I was a fan of NC. The first was the lack of F1-F10 keys in the sub keypad on the left side of the classic IBM PC keyboard in all keyboards available to me except the one I bought in '92...
  - georgia_peach 4y ago
    It opens a separate xterm window on debian. Does it have an integrated terminal on windows?
jonathankoren 4y ago
36 years later, and people are still cloning Norton Commander? I never understood the appeal of them, especially given a GUI. (Recall, NC was originally a DOS app.) I suspect OFMs are a class of software that's going to die out when the generation of users that grew up with them die off.
MrYellowP 4y ago
Double Commander, inspired by Midnight Commander, (1994) inspired by Total Commander, (1993) inspired by Norton Commander, (1986) inspired by ...
whartung 4y ago
To be fair, the majority of my "file manager" work is in my IDE, or other applications. If there's any other file motion, odds are it'll be the command line for me. I'm not pedantic about it, it's just how it is. My current gross abuse at this level is with the Mac Page/Numbers/Keynote/TextEdit applications that work with Apple document model. I know I should, I but I just don't close anything. For quick letters in Pages, I just reuse the same template over and over and print it out. It's not untoward for me to have 30+ "Untitled XXX" documents open. Just one of the many zillion windows I routinely have open. I have 50 documents open in Preview. So, my "file manager" is the Windows menu. The pervasive persistence of the Apple Document model is very abuse friendly.
- majkinetor 4y ago
  IDEs have notoriously bad file managers. I havily use VSCode CTRL P but that is when I know exactly what I want. If not, I need visuals and nothing beats good file manager.
majkinetor 4y ago
Double Commander is great and in my opinion better then then Total Commander - it has better UI, saner configuration and is cross platform and FOSS. DC is first thing I install on any Windows machine instead of using Explorer. If you want quick way to install it and/or TC on Windows, along with selection of plugins, use my chocolatey TCP [1] packages. You can use cinst doublecmd tcp cinst totalcommander tcp to install doublecmd or totalcommander with around 20 great plugins and keep them all up to date with single command (choco update), or you can cherry pick individual plugins. Since both file managers use the same plugin format, the package will work with whatever one you use. Both packages have parameter /DefaultFM which will make system open it everywhere where it would open Explorer instead. There are also dark and minimial themes I created you may want to check: tcp-unlit and dcp-unlit [2] Everything is on GitHub in case you want to improve [3] [1]: https://community.chocolatey.org/packages/tcp#dependencies https://community.chocolatey.org/packages/tcp#dependencies [2]: https://community.chocolatey.org/packages/dcc-unlit https://community.chocolatey.org/packages/dcc-unlit [3]: https://github.com/majkinetor/au-packages/tree/master/tcp https://github.com/majkinetor/au-packages/tree/master/tcp
Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
Abstract: Marta is the greatest file manager for MacOS, by light years. Longer version: Before switching away from Windows, I was a long-time Far Manager [1] user. It is a great, great program far better than various graphical commanders. It had a set of killer features: 1. Quick directories, press ctrl-1 and you are there 2. No graphical cruft. All these tiny boxes and panels with buttons you see everywhere on the likes of Total commander, Double commander, etc, they are gone, none 3. It is text mode. Hard to spoil a properly done text mode with bad fonts, tiny fonts, etc - especially if you can set them up yourself 4. Folder operations. Open same folder in another panel, compare panels, selecting files, masks, regex, all done, all great 5. Great archive support. Open archive from folder, copy from archive, all done all great 6. Very, very capable build-in editor with code highlighting, and hex viewer/editor(!). I could edit savegames right from a file manager, imagine that?! I could go on, but nothing I have ever tried on GNU/Linux and MacOS came even close to it. I even tried to use ports of Far [2], but it is... well, far from smoothly supporting either platform. So I was really unhappy when using MacOS (there are few apps I hate as much as native Finder) until I've found Marta [3] recently. And Marta is truly great file manager for MacOS that even improves on Far in a lot of ways. Its author Yan Zhulanow is an extremely great developer who has put a lot of thought into the application, and it does everything that Far does (maybe sans a built-in editor), and it improves on it in many ways. Try it out. It is blazing fast, it is very well thought through from top to bottom, and it is probably one of the few perfect apps that leave you stunned after discovering it. It does have a relatively high learning curve to learn how to configure it and to learn all the hotkeys, but the result is very much worth it. [1]: https://www.farmanager.com/ https://www.farmanager.com/ [2]: https://github.com/elfmz/far2l https://github.com/elfmz/far2l [3]: https://marta.sh https://marta.sh
- majkinetor 4y ago
  You don't have to use GUI with both TC and DC. Its a matter of configuration. One important thing I do is set fuzzy filter on so that when I type in folder it selects file/folder I want quickly and ENTER will do the rest. Hotkeys are a thing too. I never use mouse with them.
- meebee 4y ago
  It does feel like a native Mac app and is quick and responsive. Is there a way to modify the key hotkeys to be like Total Commander? At this point I don't want to have to learn another set of keystrokes. I briefly looked at it and hit space to select a few files, and it opened them, and then I hit Cmd+D to get a quick directory and instead duplicated the file. So it seems that a key mapping from us old commander users must have been done by someone.

154 points by smartmic 4y ago

Would be interesting to know what these "new ideas in file management" are that TC does not have.

In my opinion Total Commander is the #1 best app ever and Double Commander is an excellent free clone. It used to be incomplete and buggy but improved substantially during the recent years.

janandonly 4y ago

I'm no longer on Windows, but I always loved [Total Commander](https://www.ghisler.com/ https://www.ghisler.com/). As others have noted before: there is a decline in the need for this kind of tools because files are hidden from view nowadays. We finally have systems where most of the time, a photo is "a photo" and not "a file that you open with [Irfanview](https://www.irfanview.com/)(or https://www.irfanview.com/)(or whatever)".

mdrzn 4y ago

Literally one of the first software I've ever used since the first 2000s. Still used to date. Love me some Total Commander!

underlines 4y ago

For data hoarding a good file manager is still key. When you're managing your own data without todays abstraction layers provided by all those walled gardens (Google Photos, Spotify, Netflix), you will copy, rename and structure a lot of that data: Downloaded content often times packed away in countless partial rar files, sometimes wrongly named or structured. Long story short, I still depend on: - Advanced regex bulk renaming of totalcommander (but less so since Windows 11 + PowerToy's Renaming) - Fast two panel navigation, for all that pirated content (Audio/Software piracy is legal under certain circumstances in Switzerland, for example for sharing within the family) - Fast two panel folder diffing for my Photography/Videography backup into Google Drive using Google Filestream as a virtual drive (but less so, since using WinDiff for folder and file merging)

ggambetta 4y ago

I use emelfm2 on Linux. But really this all made me nostalgic for XTree [0]. What made it so damn good? Why don't we have a modern equivalent these days? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XTree https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XTree

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
nope96 4y ago
There is a fantastic windows clone of XTree that has been around forever... still updated https://www.ztree.com/html/ztreewin.htm https://www.ztree.com/html/ztreewin.htm
- mrsaint 4y ago
  How I wish there was a native version of ZTree for Linux.

liotier 4y ago

Someone liked it https://developer.run/31 https://developer.run/31 - and expresses preference over Dolphin, which I don't understand because I find that Dolphin does all that but with the benefits of KDE integration.

TonyTrapp 4y ago

Started using it a couple of years ago when I was mostly using a single operating system, now it saves my sanity by providing the same good file browsing experience across all systems.

darthcloud 4y ago

I used to be a big user of Total Commander back in the Win9x days (then Windows Commander) I was actually too much used to it and I had a hard time using my friends computer at all using the default Windows explorer. I probably updated to WinXP at some point and didn't reinstall it. Never felt the need to to install a double windows file manager since then. Even if it's clearly better than the default option.

mrweasel 4y ago
Just two years ago I had a developer I worked with on a regular basis, he is a Total Commander power user. He never opens Explorer or navigates the file system outside Total Commander. There is still a ton of weird Windows utilities being developed and maintained. While I personally don't like the platforms, there is a lot of safety in knowing that you can learn a tool and then almost 30 years later, it's still available. I'm still confident that if you want to future-proof your application, C++ and Windows is the platform to go for. Even if I don't like it.
- hulitu 4y ago
  Windows explorer is almost unusable. Microsoft poluting it with Downloads, Images, Videos and My Documents virtual folders (just to name a few) didn't help either.
  - ziddoap 4y ago
    What specific aspects do you find to be almost unusable? There's room for improvement (new features are always nice), sure, but 'almost unusable' is quite the exaggeration when you consider that there is ~1B Windows installs and yet outside of small tech circles I've never once heard someone complain about Explorer or its usability. It Just Works, pretty much all the time, and is easy enough and intuitive enough that I haven't even had to explain it to the tech-illiterates in my circle. Does the Downloads folder really make you say 'this is unusable'?

rob74 4y ago

I'm a big fan of two-panel file managers, starting with the ancestor of them all, Norton Commander under DOS. Under Windows, I used Total Commander. I even started developing an NC clone myself with Delphi, but only got as far as an "alpha version". After switching to Linux, I used Krusader for a few years, but then discovered and switched to Double Commander. Since it is developed with Lazarus/FreePascal, maybe I will be able to apply some of the ideas I had for my Delphi NC clone to it (if I can find the time and sympathy from the maintainers)?

BeetleB 4y ago
> Under Windows, I used Total Commander. I would recommend Far for Windows users. Much more like the original Norton Commander. https://www.farmanager.com/ https://www.farmanager.com/
- realharo 4y ago
  Yeah, Far actually has pretty good integration with the command line, which is a must for a good file manager - and a file manager is a very natural fit for many CLI workflows.
- TheRealPomax 4y ago
  This is really "in addition to total commander" as far as I'm concerned. Far is great on the CLI, but when you're not working with terminals you generally want a normal looking application. Both Far and TC are basically "two sides of the same coin", you can use either one, but using both in their respective environments makes life even better.
  - BeetleB 4y ago
    > Far is great on the CLI, but when you're _not_ working in the CLI you want a normal looking application. I have Far as an icon on my desktop/shortcuts bar. I just click it and it runs. When I quit it (F10), the window goes away. Most people will not even realize it's a CLI program. What exactly would be the problem using it this way?

res0nat0r 4y ago

I've really liked Altap Salamnder for Windows. Lots of features, and freeware too. https://www.altap.cz/ https://www.altap.cz/

ihateolives 4y ago
I used it for quite some time, even bought a license but then dropped it when when they dragged their feet for years with utf8 filename support. I think they never fixed it.
mobilio 4y ago
I've using it since version 1.52 AFAIK and this is FIRST app i install on fresh Windows.
- res0nat0r 4y ago
  I also recommend Everything. It's the best file searching app I've found for Windows that fits my searching style, just type a regex and give me what I want. https://www.voidtools.com/ https://www.voidtools.com/

cestith 4y ago

It seems a bit odd to me to credit Total Commander but not a single one of Midnight Commander, Windows Commander, EF Commander, WinNC, PC Commander, SpeedCommander, XCommander, XTree, YTree, ZTree, or the venerable Norton Commander. It even still uses the same hotkeys as Norton Commander. Still, it supports Total Commander's plugins in case someone is using those, it's LGPL, it looks like a decent example of a useable Free Pascal application to dive into contributing against, it's cross-platform (Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, macOS), and it builds against gtk2, qt4, or qt5. Overall it looks like a nice project. It could probably use a commit in the About page for a first contribution to the project noting a little more history of its lineage.

npteljes 4y ago
It's not odd, they are literally creating an upgraded Total Commander clone.
nathell 4y ago
Windows Commander was the former name of Total Commander. It changed the name in 2002 after Christian Ghisler received a cease-and-desist letter about trademark usage from Microsoft.
- cestith 4y ago
  Microsoft has been known to be perhaps overzealous in their trademark protection at times, but I think that's a valid complaint. It fills the same niche as Windows Explorer so confusion was quite possible. I always had Total Commander on my BartPE images back in the day.
notyourday 4y ago
This is missing vc - Volkov Commander - written in assembly. It was tiny, had amazingly complete functionality and was blazingly fast.
- cestith 4y ago
  Yes, sorry. I meant it to be illustrative of many of them being out there and influencing one another. I'm not sure I could put together a definitive list in the scope of an HN comment. vc was definitely worth mentioning, so thanks for bringing it up.

desindol 4y ago

Just let me replace win+e without ahk or registry editing.

tveyben 4y ago
Total commander is linkes to Win+1 for me, no need for Win+E! Win+2 is for Notepad++ Those two are my most used shortcuts on Windows. Must give double commander a test run on Linux (and see if that’s better than TotalCommander in Wine). TCM shortcuts are so second nature that I can’t imagine anything else (never found a good solution did OSX) I am too old to call it by it’s new name MacOS, I also call the command key for the Apple key ;-)
yardshop 4y ago
To expand on what tveyben mentioned, the first 10 items in your Windows task bar can be opened by pressing Win+1 through Win+0. If you pin items there, they will always have that keyboard shortcut. Even so, as much as I prefer using alternate file managers, I still like having Win+E for regular old Explorer.

Aspos 4y ago

FAR works on Linux and MacOS as well https://github.com/elfmz/far2l https://github.com/elfmz/far2l

eterps 4y ago

DirOpus for Amiga was my first two-panel filemanager. Screenshot for nostalgia :) -> http://www.abime.net/img/files/applications/DOpus/DOpus4_2.png http://www.abime.net/img/files/applications/DOpus/DOpus4_2.p...

blackhaz 4y ago
Alas, error 403.
- TonyTrapp 4y ago
  Hotlink protection. Hit Return on the URL bar to reload it with a clean referrer, and it will display.
mhd 4y ago
I really found it surprising that so few of the PC based orthodox filemanagers adopted the DOpus style of user-defined buttons and multiple rows thereof at the bottom, instead keeping with the few function key-based operations inherited from a time when there was simple no other option. (I'm aware of Gentoo and Worker doing that on Linux)
dazzawazza 4y ago
While it is nostalgia, I use Directory Opus 12 every day on my windows PC. Really speeds up my everyday work in game development.
- UberFly 4y ago
  Directory Opus addict here too. It is my MVP in pretty much everything I do on my PC.

blackhaz 4y ago

Commanders! The first thing I install on literally any computer I touch. It's like climbing on the top of the hill (or mountain!) and overlooking the dense foliage. I really don't establish a mental connection with the machine until I have a commander running. Doing any disk operations in the Explorer, whatever else drag-and-drop there is, or just plain shell, is just pathetically painful and slow. Also, shout out to DOS Navigator! I used Norton Commander until 386DX-40, but then switched to the Navigator. Still remember I saw it first time in a shop where I was buying pirated games. The dude in the shop with the long hair was copying files and it looked uber-cool for some reason. I had to ask what was the name of this wonderful utility. He silently showed me the About dialog without turning back. There was no way back to NC from that point on my high-tower Pentium-133.

agentwiggles 4y ago
I guess stuff like Commander never quite got a hold on me because it feels easy to do everything at the shell. What kinds of benefits am I missing out on?
- orzig 4y ago
  Seconded. I am feeling the enthusiasm of people on this thread and I am really curious - if this could really make me as happy as it makes them I’m totally game, but I just don’t see where it would fit into my workflow. Can some people give more concrete examples of what they use it for?
  - saiya-jin 4y ago
    2 panes (both heavily tabbed so more like 10-15 of them representing various projects/activitives, tabbing for some reason works better mentally than bunch of explorer windows) is great concept, you always move from A to B if organizing/copying/moving. When I see people trying to achieve something in explorer, its literally 10x slower, and I speak of people doing it for living in bank, like desktop support guys. Alt+F7 -> fulltext search, only in given file types, in archives (recursively), limiting for size, date, regexp etc. - way more powerful than any other tool I've ever used. Viewing and editing files directly in archives (or in archives in archives in archives) without manually unpacking - as mainly java dev I do this very often. Again the speed and convenience is unmatched. Very good built-in multi-rename tool, with preview of changes, GUI for this is so much better than any command line tool. Very good file comparison tool - cleaner than anything other products (or dedicated ones) bring. I don't want to end up listing all features of Total commander, but suffice to say its too my first tool to install (after firefox with ublock origin). Its not as much about how content I am using it, but whenever I see colleagues doing similar actions, they are maddeningly slow, ineffective and sometimes even give up for task that takes me few seconds. But that's full time usage of 2-pane mode since 1993, never saw any appeal in those simple explorer-like windows when I can be super quick with few shortcuts.

pkrumins 4y ago

Total Commander is the best commander.

RachelF 4y ago
There's a great 3rd party upgrade to it. Best for power users: https://www.tcup.pl/index.php/en/ https://www.tcup.pl/index.php/en/ To continue with the 1990's vibe, Mr T would "pity the fool who don't use TCUP"

jrm4 4y ago

Somewhat unrelated, but I'm still wondering why there still appears to be not much of a push for strong GUI filemanager + terminal integration. I know Dolphin has it, but it feels not quite there.

mhd 4y ago

It's interesting to see the "decline" of secondary file managers on Windows and probably Linux systems, too. Back in the days, pretty much any "power user" had their own favorite replacement for the built-in stop gap solution. Quite often one of the commanders, but I've seen other preferences. There was a pretty huge market of shareware (or open source on linux) for this. Next to image viewers probably one of the most common third party tools. I rarely see that these days, both from regular users and my fellow software developers. Is it because file usage in general has declined? Generally mabye, but not in that target demographic. Is it because the system apps have gotten better? Maaaybe. I personally wouldn't consider the Win 11 explorer to be that more usable than winfile.exe, but people have different thresholds. Personally, I'd even make the argument that they've become worse at times and that they're not even in the same niche, i.e. a "file system interface", probably spatial and a more abstracted powerful file manager could and should co-exist. Hopefully the file selection dialogue then isn't totally unrelated from a UI point of view.

qwerty456127 4y ago
> It's interesting to see the "decline" of secondary file managers on Windows and probably Linux systems, too. Back in the days, pretty much any "power user" had their own favorite replacement for the built-in stop gap solution. That's because typical everyday workflows became more on-line and less filesystem-centric this way. The proportion of "power user" is also much smaller today, most of the computer users are ordinary people and don't even have a solid understanding of what a file is.
SergeAx 4y ago
I started with Norton Commander under MS DOS in 1990-s. I am still using a Far Manager on Windows. It is completely keyboard-based, and I see from the experience that my file operations are 2-3 times more effective then of my peers using system file managers with mouse (or, even worse, touchpad). I have a years old system of file storage in my home directory, mostly for code: Github, Gitlab, work projects, pet projects etc. Also Downloads folder is there by default. It is much like using a console, but with greater visibility and pre-defined shortcuts for frequent operations.
4y ago

yardshop 4y ago

Neat to see this here, I just started using this app a couple months ago and I like it. I've been a big fan of alternative file managers for years. I loved LIST back in the DOS days as an alternative to DIR =) where you could easily browse folders, and view files in regular or hex view with a keypress. After moving to Windows, I wanted something similar and found The V File Viewer (used to be called V, The File Viewer) by Charles Prineas (https://www.fileviewer.com https://www.fileviewer.com). This has hex view, CSV view, and many other useful features. It can be set up in a dual-paned fashion similar to the *-Commander line of apps, but with its own approach. I used Total Commander for a while too and registered it, but didn't stick with it. Recently I wanted something similar that I could put on computers at work and share with staff, and found Double Commander and like it a lot. It has its own approach and quirks as well, but I'm getting used to it. I also like that fact that it's written in Free Pascal and Lazarus. I used to do a lot with Delphi and this has gotten me back into that language with the thought that I might be able to contribute some changes at some point. Also along those lines, just the other day I learned about CudaText which is a very nice open source programmer's editor similar to SublimeText. It's also written in Free Pascal and Lazarus. I'm happier using this and sharing with staff than I am with Visual Studio Code which comes with too much overbearing MS-ness for my preferences.

hota_mazi 4y ago

I've been a big fan of xPlorer 2 [1] for many years now. [1] https://www.zabkat.com/ https://www.zabkat.com/

pipeline_peak 4y ago

These old school Commander type file managers don’t integrate too well. Windows 11 side by side pane is fantastic anyway. I guess it’s ideal if you really have to sit down and do busy work, but I don’t see anything wrong with File Explorer……..except that obnoxiously excessive side panel that forever thinks I want to use OneAnything or weird quick access virtual folders that points to something called Documents completely separate from my local Documents sigh. They could make file explorer a lot simpler.

TheRealPomax 4y ago

Having a hard time finding anything on the site that explains how it's different from Total Commander though, other than price. If it's just "Total Commander, but free", including TC plugin support, I'd be rather surprised if that's even legal? Because if it looks and acts effectively the same as a paid application, except yours is free, then there is very concrete and intentional monetary damage being done.

npteljes 4y ago
It runs on Linux natively, for one. And also the settings are reorganized.
arpa 4y ago
You must really love software patents!
- ccbccccbbcccbb 4y ago
  No it's not about patents and legalese. It's about human(e) attitude. Christian Ghisler has been developing Total Commander for 27 years, since 1995. While he didn't invent the idea of two-pane file manager and more or less reimplemented Norton Commander in proper graphics-mode GUI, he added so much more to it over those three decades that it wouldn't be right to call it a copy of NC; moreover, he didn't ship it for free, he priced it at the same $49. What the author of Copy, sorry, Double Commander does is pure and simple dumping. It's like standing next to a bakery and giving away same cakes for free. Does that feel right? I wonder how the development of Double Commander is backed financially.
  - unixhero 4y ago
    It is open source, free as in libre, EDIT and as in beer.
    - ccbccccbbcccbb 4y ago
      From https://doublecmd.github.io https://doublecmd.github.io >Double Commander is absolutely free <,comma> open source software. Implies free as in beer as well, unless someone rubs my nose into the price stated somewhere on the website.

gigel82 4y ago

Love it. It's the first thing I install on macOS and Linux; for Windows I already own several Total Commander licenses.

TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
What do you use on macOS?
- gigel82 4y ago
  I'm still using it from when I last installed it on my macOS, didn't realize he deprecated mac support :( . FWIW, the installer is called "doublecmd-0.9.10-9640.qt.x86_64.dmg" if you want to look it up online somewhere. I'll guess I have to look for an alternative now... sigh
  - out_of_protocol 4y ago
    https://doublecmd.sourceforge.io/site/eng/snapshots.php https://doublecmd.sourceforge.io/site/eng/snapshots.php snapshots for mac available, latest is 1.1.0
    - gigel82 4y ago
      Thanks, worked for me!

dark-star 4y ago

As a regular Total Commander user since version 3-point-something (and Norton Commander before that), I cannot imagine ever going back to Windows Explorer for file management. I'm infinitely faster than coworkers who work with Explorer, and it's awesome. Seeing an almost-perfect clone as fully open-source software makes me happy. However, building a fully-featured open-source clone is probably years in the future, even for the features I use most. One just has to read the release notes for Total Commander to see what kind of corner-cases and special cases Christian (Total Commander author) has had to take care of. Just being able to put copy jobs into the background, work some more, and then bring them back into foreground again I cannot even imagine on how tricky this was to code so that it works correctly (and all using Pascal, no less) I will definitely keep an eye out on this one, but I don't think I'll make the switch in the near future.

ttpphd 4y ago
Thank you. As a total commander user, I was hoping someone would do this comparison and share it. Appreciated!
majkinetor 4y ago
DC is very complite replacement of TC, I was using TC (in advanced way, I know most of its numerious features) for decades and switched to DC without missing anything.

aidenn0 4y ago

If I don't have TC shortcuts in my muscle memory, am I losing out on using Krusader on linux rather than Double Commander?

unixhero 4y ago
Double Commander and Total Commander are amazing tools of the mind.
Isognoviastoma 4y ago
Nope, depending on your workflow, you can miss features of Krusader like archive integration, browsing over ssh, lock-step navigation in panels, selection modes, builtin editor/viewer formats coverage and other tiny yet comfortable goodies. Double Commander is an acceptable substitute of Krusader on non-Unices.

alexalx666 4y ago

MC meets MS Word, no thanks, MC already has everything + fluffy feeling you are on 80386. Sometimes I just go there to relax

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

GekkePrutser 4y ago

Too bad it's not TUI, I was hoping to see an improved version of midnight commander :)

clint 4y ago

All of these commanders are a rip of the original Norton Commander by John Socha in 1986. John also created the first screen saver and coined the term. His company also created the Microsoft Plus! addon for Windows 95 and screensavers for Win98. Pretty cool dude!

rasz 4y ago
Dont you mean "Norton Commander Copyright (C) 1986 by Peter Norton"? :-) Reminds me of https://wetmachine.com/my-thoughts-exactly/ghost-writer/ https://wetmachine.com/my-thoughts-exactly/ghost-writer/ >I was ego surfing today when I came upon this link to a book “Inside the Sun386i and Sun486i” by Peter Norton and, to my great astonishment, me. >And it turned out that I was going to have to write a 400 or so page book. For which I was going to be given, I think, a $3,000 advance against royalties. The book was going to say “By PETER NORTON” and there would be a tiny “with John Sundman” at the bottom. Norton was not required to do any writing or editing;
- hjkl0 4y ago
  I guess you were joking, but FWIW, John Socha is the creator of Norton Commander: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Socha https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Socha > John Socha-Leialoha (born 1958) is a software developer best known for creating Norton Commander, the first orthodox file manager

mmsimanga 4y ago

I often "favorite" such threads because of the alternatives listed in the comments. I use Multi Commander[0]. I have tried a few of the others over the years but for the last five years or more I haven't moved from Multi Commander. [0] http://multicommander.com/ http://multicommander.com/

unixhero 4y ago

Double Commander is amazing! Is is a drop in replacement for Total Commander. It even supports Total Commander expansion modules, of which there are hundreds.

georgia_peach 4y ago

I've been playing with this on Linux. Lots of features. Built-in everything: editor, viewer, searcher, batch-renamer, grepper, etc. It all seems to work. No crashes. FreePascal is fantastic for writing things like this. If I were stuck on Windows without Cygwin (coreutils), this would do.

witrak 4y ago
>I've been playing with this on Linux. Short question: does it grab Tab keystroke or allow to use it in shell normally? Lack of shell Tab expansion was the second reason I never accepted MC in Linux even though I was a fan of NC. The first was the lack of F1-F10 keys in the sub keypad on the left side of the classic IBM PC keyboard in all keyboards available to me except the one I bought in '92...
- georgia_peach 4y ago
  It opens a separate xterm window on debian. Does it have an integrated terminal on windows?

jonathankoren 4y ago

36 years later, and people are still cloning Norton Commander? I never understood the appeal of them, especially given a GUI. (Recall, NC was originally a DOS app.) I suspect OFMs are a class of software that's going to die out when the generation of users that grew up with them die off.

MrYellowP 4y ago

Double Commander, inspired by Midnight Commander, (1994) inspired by Total Commander, (1993) inspired by Norton Commander, (1986) inspired by ...

whartung 4y ago

To be fair, the majority of my "file manager" work is in my IDE, or other applications. If there's any other file motion, odds are it'll be the command line for me. I'm not pedantic about it, it's just how it is. My current gross abuse at this level is with the Mac Page/Numbers/Keynote/TextEdit applications that work with Apple document model. I know I should, I but I just don't close anything. For quick letters in Pages, I just reuse the same template over and over and print it out. It's not untoward for me to have 30+ "Untitled XXX" documents open. Just one of the many zillion windows I routinely have open. I have 50 documents open in Preview. So, my "file manager" is the Windows menu. The pervasive persistence of the Apple Document model is very abuse friendly.

majkinetor 4y ago
IDEs have notoriously bad file managers. I havily use VSCode CTRL P but that is when I know exactly what I want. If not, I need visuals and nothing beats good file manager.

majkinetor 4y ago

Double Commander is great and in my opinion better then then Total Commander - it has better UI, saner configuration and is cross platform and FOSS. DC is first thing I install on any Windows machine instead of using Explorer. If you want quick way to install it and/or TC on Windows, along with selection of plugins, use my chocolatey TCP [1] packages. You can use cinst doublecmd tcp cinst totalcommander tcp to install doublecmd or totalcommander with around 20 great plugins and keep them all up to date with single command (choco update), or you can cherry pick individual plugins. Since both file managers use the same plugin format, the package will work with whatever one you use. Both packages have parameter /DefaultFM which will make system open it everywhere where it would open Explorer instead. There are also dark and minimial themes I created you may want to check: tcp-unlit and dcp-unlit [2] Everything is on GitHub in case you want to improve [3] [1]: https://community.chocolatey.org/packages/tcp#dependencies https://community.chocolatey.org/packages/tcp#dependencies [2]: https://community.chocolatey.org/packages/dcc-unlit https://community.chocolatey.org/packages/dcc-unlit [3]: https://github.com/majkinetor/au-packages/tree/master/tcp https://github.com/majkinetor/au-packages/tree/master/tcp

Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago

Abstract: Marta is the greatest file manager for MacOS, by light years. Longer version: Before switching away from Windows, I was a long-time Far Manager [1] user. It is a great, great program far better than various graphical commanders. It had a set of killer features: 1. Quick directories, press ctrl-1 and you are there 2. No graphical cruft. All these tiny boxes and panels with buttons you see everywhere on the likes of Total commander, Double commander, etc, they are gone, none 3. It is text mode. Hard to spoil a properly done text mode with bad fonts, tiny fonts, etc - especially if you can set them up yourself 4. Folder operations. Open same folder in another panel, compare panels, selecting files, masks, regex, all done, all great 5. Great archive support. Open archive from folder, copy from archive, all done all great 6. Very, very capable build-in editor with code highlighting, and hex viewer/editor(!). I could edit savegames right from a file manager, imagine that?! I could go on, but nothing I have ever tried on GNU/Linux and MacOS came even close to it. I even tried to use ports of Far [2], but it is... well, far from smoothly supporting either platform. So I was really unhappy when using MacOS (there are few apps I hate as much as native Finder) until I've found Marta [3] recently. And Marta is truly great file manager for MacOS that even improves on Far in a lot of ways. Its author Yan Zhulanow is an extremely great developer who has put a lot of thought into the application, and it does everything that Far does (maybe sans a built-in editor), and it improves on it in many ways. Try it out. It is blazing fast, it is very well thought through from top to bottom, and it is probably one of the few perfect apps that leave you stunned after discovering it. It does have a relatively high learning curve to learn how to configure it and to learn all the hotkeys, but the result is very much worth it. [1]: https://www.farmanager.com/ https://www.farmanager.com/ [2]: https://github.com/elfmz/far2l https://github.com/elfmz/far2l [3]: https://marta.sh https://marta.sh

majkinetor 4y ago
You don't have to use GUI with both TC and DC. Its a matter of configuration. One important thing I do is set fuzzy filter on so that when I type in folder it selects file/folder I want quickly and ENTER will do the rest. Hotkeys are a thing too. I never use mouse with them.
meebee 4y ago
It does feel like a native Mac app and is quick and responsive. Is there a way to modify the key hotkeys to be like Total Commander? At this point I don't want to have to learn another set of keystrokes. I briefly looked at it and hit space to select a few files, and it opened them, and then I hit Cmd+D to get a quick directory and instead duplicated the file. So it seems that a key mapping from us old commander users must have been done by someone.